Saturday, February 9, 2013

Warm Your Valentine With These Two-Bite Pies

In less than a month, my second Charmed Pie Shoppe mystery, Peach Pies and Alibis, hits the shelves and I've spent the first part of the winter baking pies for the third book. It's funny, because even though there are only half a dozen pie recipes in each book, they take forever to create. I'm a bit of a perfectionist and if the pie doesn't score a perfect 10 with my official taste testers, then the recipe doesn't make the book.These sweet, little heart-shaped pies wowed even my toughest critics (my husband and son) who really aren't dessert people. The heart-shaped treats taste rather like a cookie with a delightful surprise inside. The crust is buttery and crackles with granules of finishing sugar. And the combination of fresh raspberries, white chocolate, and cream cheese in the filling? Heaven! Do you show people you love them through food? I definitely do and so does my protagonist, Ella Mae LeFaye. Of course, I don't have her magical abilities when it comes to baking, but with this recipe, you don't need to be magical to make people believe you're truly enchanted! Charmed Heart-Shaped White Chocolate Raspberry Cream Two-Bite
Pies

▪ ½ cup white chocolate chipsAdd all ingredients to a
food processor and pulse until smooth. Refrigerate until ready to use.Preheat oven to 400. Line
a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Roll out dough and cut with heart cookie
cutter. Line cookie sheet with piecrust hearts. Add a dollop of filling (amount
will depend on size of cookie cutter). Wet edges of bottom heart and press
another heart gently on top. Seal edges with tines of a fork. Brush hearts with
Charmed egg wash and add a sprinkle of finishing sugar. For fun, use different colored sugars
like pink, white, and red. Bake for approximately 12 minutes or until crust
turns golden brown.

Ella Mae LeFaye’s Charmed Pie Shoppe is wildly popular in Havenwood, Georgia—which is not surprising since Ella Mae can lace her baked goods with enchantments. The shop’s extraordinary success seems destined to continue when Ella Mae meets an engaged couple who hire her to handle the dessert buffet at their wedding.

But Ella Mae has a lot on her plate. She is also searching for the origin of her magical powers—and hoping to determine if the spark of attraction she feels for the handsome Hugh Dylan is authentic or just her new abilities gone awry.

Then Ella Mae discovers a high-standing member of the community dead, and a wedding guest becomes seriously ill at the event she’s catering. Now she’ll have to use all her sleuthing skills and culinary talents to prove her pies don’t contain a killer ingredient . . .

I tried this recipe with several cookie cutters. I ended up liking the 4" heart the best. You could make several sizes and change the filling for each size. Blueberry and strawberry work just as well as raspberry.